My first regional NASPA conference, the IV-W "Views that Inspire", left me with messages that I hope I can retain and insert into my professional energy. I spent the past three days with great colleagues learning from each other and commiserating on everything from students who make poor life choices to budgetary issues to restructuring concerns. I attended sessions on student conduct as a retention tool, behavioral intervention teams, successful publishing, and empowering the bystander. Keynote speeches by Larry Roper, Gwendolyn Dungy, and Cleo Parker Robinson inspired us to make a difference. Sometimes at the end of conferences, I feel energized to go back to my campus and create change. Other times I feel incredibly overwhelmed by how much we are NOT doing, or how much work there still remains to be done. This conference left me with a feeling of both.
I live tweeted most of the conference (as did many), especially some of the nuggets of wisdom from they keynote speakers. Larry Roper, an incredibly engaging and humane speaker, challenged us as professionals to be conscious and intentional about they way we enter students' lives and that the little things that we do not necessarily think about leave footprints on their lives. Do we stomp in or do we step lightly? How do those approaches make a difference in their students lives? What is the depth of our humanity, and how do we make room in our lives for those who ask for our help? If we do make room for those students who openly seek us, do we choose to judge them or do we choose to feel for those students--and if we choose judgment, what does that mean?
Larry often says that our job is to believe in other people's children. This cannot be more true, especially when we work with students whose families do not believe in them or even understand what it means to be in school. He also challenges us to look at love as a measure of sustainability--but in what sense? Sustainability in persistence, or more importantly in hope gets a student through the day. How can we as administrators empower that even further?
Gwendolyn Dungy asked us to reorient our practice to higher education's national agenda of persistence and completion. I believe that her message and Larry's message tie together nicely. The challenge behind all of this? We hear the message in the context of our conference, but can we take it back to our home campuses and implement the ideas we know we should. To create connection, Cleo Parker Robinson forced us to connect our spirits with our bodies (for better or worse--either way it made its way into a YouTube video). She demonstrated the powerful connection of language and movement, even some of us did not want to engage in this way, we all did. For me, this was a great demonstration of our need to be intentional about accommodating learning styles.
So many nuggets of wisdom, so little time in our day-to-day to implement them. We've come so far as a profession, yet we still have so far to go. Time to get moving!
Nicely written post, Jill. I was motivated just reading it and I didn't sit through all of the speeches. :-) For me, what you said Larry was discussing directly relates to Lisa's blog about giving people your attention. I think in student services it is often easy to get caught up in the routine of answering the same questions over and over again or providing the same service day in and day out. Your post is a good reminder that every time we talk to a student, we could be the person that influences their decision, whether it be to attend an institution, to change their major, to join a club, whatever they may be considering when they cross your path. Especially with certain populations like first-generation students or those who don't even have a family, let alone a support system, it's important to remember on an hourly basis what influence we may have.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the great reminder and great post about what being in student services is all about!